Despite a resounding failure as British Prime Minister in 2022, Liz Truss has not left the arena and is launching a new political movement to push the Conservatives to embrace even more right-wing ideas.
Liz Truss only had a brief 49-day stint in power before being ousted by her own party in October 2022, after presenting a proposed budget that caused financial markets to panic.
But far from being discouraged, she has managed to remain present in the political game, to the great dismay of her successor Rishi Sunak, largely left behind by the Labor opposition in the polls for the legislative elections which must be held by January 2025. Since her ouster, she has regularly urged the government to reduce taxes, reverse certain measures to achieve carbon neutrality, and raise the retirement age.
“A Conservative government should not seek to expand the 'nanny state'
,” she wrote on X last week about the planned gradual ban on tobacco in the United Kingdom.
On Tuesday February 6, she launched with other elected officials a new movement within the Tories, already divided into numerous factions: the
“Popular Conservatives”
, or
“PopCons”
, a group which received the support of some hard Brexiters and defenders of the free market.
“Undermining work”
As the Tories prepare to draft their program for the next election, this group will try to lobby for stricter budgetary and migration policies.
This further complicates the task of Rishi Sunak, who is already struggling to maintain a balance between the centrists and the right wing of his party.
“Liz Truss's undermining of her successor is unusual but not unprecedented
,” political scientist Tim Bale of Queen Mary University of London told AFP, citing Margaret Thatcher's attempts to thwarting John Major in the 1990s. At the first meeting of the
“PopCons”
in London on Tuesday, Liz Truss notably attacked the failure of Rishi Sunak's government to tackle
“left-wing extremists”
.
Among other figures in the movement, former minister Jacob Rees-Mogg castigated
the “international elite”
.
Lee Anderson - former vice-president of the Tories, who recently resigned from his post over a disagreement over migration policy - estimated that the British have little interest in achieving carbon neutrality, the official climate ambition of the United Kingdom. United.
But as the legislative elections approach, they are not calling for Rishi Sunak, the fifth conservative leader since the Brexit vote in 2016, to be removed from the leadership of the party.
“A decent position” in sight
However, it is difficult to know how many elected officials will swell the ranks of her movement, as Liz Truss remains unpopular within the conservative party.
The former prime minister is also very poorly perceived by the British, who hold her partly responsible for the cost of living crisis the country is going through.
A survey by pollster Savanta in January gave him a net approval rating of -54, the worst of any political figure measured.
“What's interesting about her is that most unpopular politicians have some ability to bounce back once they leave office (...) but that's not the case with Liz Truss
. ”
notes the institute's director of political research, Chris Hopkins.
David Jeffery, a professor specializing in British politics at the University of Liverpool, doubts that Liz Truss
"will hide her face to the point of believing that she has another chance of access"
to 10 Downing Street.
Rather, he believes his aim is to influence the future direction of the Conservative Party, while trying to restore his own reputation:
"it's certainly about shaping (the party) and then maybe getting a decent job"
once the Tories returned to opposition.
A source close to Liz Truss confirms that the latter has
“firm ideas about the future direction of the party and the country”
, and that she would seek, initially, to be re-elected as an MP in the next elections.